Contracts
by Mister Mystery
Summary: Drabbles, flash fiction, and short stories centered around Shelly de Killer. Rated M to be safe.
1. surety

_Do I really want to do this?_

It was not a question he asked himself often, especially in circumstances like these. And yet, as he stood over his quietly sleeping form, the thought had crossed his mind.

How long had he been doing this? So long it was hard to remember a time when he didn't. When his life wasn't driven by violence, wasn't fueled by bloodshed. He remembered a time when he was happy, living a quiet unassuming life as a butler for a wealthy, caring family.

And then fire. And then emptiness. And then? Then there was only the work.

The first three had been easy, or so it seemed at the time. Later contracts would test his skills in much the same way. But those three, those first three, were his prey. He stopped at nothing to make sure they paid for their crimes against him.

Against him. No. Such selfishness. Against his family.

Those first three had paved the way for more work. Far more than he had also suffered similarly at the hands of such men. They saw what he did, found out how to contact him, and the work had begun. Not always the best work, the most virtuous work, but he never questioned it. The chances were if he was at their door, they had done something or other to put him there.

Not always, of course. But those clients always paid their dues in the end. To him or to others.

And now he was in a position to collect on dues that were sorely deserved.

And still the thought flit across his mind.

Why? He had done everything to deserve this. Everything to bring him crashing down and to summon the Reaper to his bedside. Why did he feel sympathy for this of all creatures?

Perhaps it was not the man in question. Perhaps it was simply a distaste for the work.

He had felt it, niggling at the edges of his mind for some time now. The job in Vienna. The disaster in Athens. The massacre at Barcelona. Things had not been going well for him recently. Now this, a betrayal of the highest order by a client who had ordered him to perform the very worst of his trade. It had only been by the grace of his silver tongue and the pragmatic sensibilities of his client that had not had to kill the prosecutor. A lucky ricochet which had saved the officers he had been forced to flee from. Now it was time to bring down the curtain on this debacle and move on.

And yet the question still lingered.

He did not wish to linger long. Every moment he spent wrestling with his psyche was an invitation for a guard to pass by, for his target to wake up, for his resolve to weaken. But he could not simply ignore it. Not this time.

So he made a decision. He would raise the knife, press it against the carotid artery, and wait. If he felt something, anything at all, for the target or for what he was about to do, he would walk away.

He removed the knife from his inner sleeve with a flick of his wrist and bent down. Gently, he pressed the blade against the neck of the sleeping man, and waited.

The silence pulsed around them. Any movement, any noise, would surely provoke action on his part. There would be no other choice. Perhaps that is what he had hoped for.

But nothing happened.

Time passed, and eventually, another thought crossed his mind.

_What am I waiting for?_

Feeling nothing, Shelly de Killer gently slid the blade across Matt Engarde's neck, and in a few moments, he was no more.


	2. point of no return

There were bodies everywhere. All around. Blood on the floor, on the walls, staining the plush burgundy carpet. I couldn't see any of it. I had tunnel vision. All I could see was the fat, mewling murderer in front of me.

His revolver lay some feet away, discarded after his first shot had grazed my shoulder and failed to elicit a reaction. He was on his knees, hands together, begging for his life.

Mary had begged for her life too, I'm sure. He hadn't listened. Neither did I.

I stood there before him, blood on my gloves and my clothes, the long scar still fresh on my face. It hadn't been more than two weeks since I lost them. Lost my life in that fire. Now there was only this.

I stood there for a long time. Long enough for him to run out of excuses and humility. He looks up at me, almost frustrated.

"If you're really going to shoot me, why haven't you done it yet?"

It was a remarkably good question for a man who was just a moment ago grovelling on the floor like a dog. Good enough that I felt it deserved an answer.

I stared down into his eyes. They were full of fear. Pure, animalistic fear. A selfish desire for survival. It made me angry. I wanted to be angry. It made what I was doing easier.

"Because I'm just going to hold you at gunpoint for a while," I answered slowly and deliberately, rage boiling quietly inside of me. "I can see the fear in your eyes, and I like it."

He tried to become stern, to deny his cowardice and me my pleasure, but he failed. Faced with his own mortality, a man will always show his true colors. He can no longer hide from what he is.

I cocked the hammer of the pistol. He began to beg once more, trying to make a deal with me, trying to get me to reconsider. My gaze drifted to the bracelet on my wrist, pink with a seashell on it. Mary had made it for me. I knew she wouldn't want this. Her parents wouldn't want this. But this wasn't for them. They were dead. Nothing could change that.

This was for me.

But perhaps out of some final sense of obligation to them, I decided to give this disgusting whelp one last chance. I looked into his eyes and searched for a reason not to pull the trigger.

All I saw was fire and blood and sweet little Mary's corpse on the floor.

Feeling nothing, I pulled the trigger.

De Killer's first contract was complete. As the client, I was quite pleased with my performance.


	3. retirement

I fired twice. The two bullets sliced through his legs, just above the kneecaps. He wouldn't be going anywhere quickly.

I advanced, slowly, from the shadows. Catching the old man on his way home from his more legitimate work had been easy, because he knew he was in no danger. I hoped I would never become so careless.

He was mewling and weeping, trying to crawl away on his stomach and leaving a trail of blood in his wake. I headed him off, shouldering the compact sub machine gun I had procured for this particular job. I was taking no chances. Not with someone as experienced as him.

When he looked up and saw my face, saw the scar running down to my chin, and realized who I was, he got a look on his face that I treasure to this very day.

"Y...you're still alive?" His voice was raspy and tinged with pain, but the surprise overrode everything else.

I felt no sympathy for him. Given what he'd done to me, and what he'd threatened to do to others, I could not let him live. No matter how much professional respect I had for the man and the work he had done in the past, I could not let him live. He had changed, fallen from my good graces.

But I also could not help myself.

I smiled. "Unlike you," I said. And then I raised the gun.

It was pointless. Tacky. Unprofessional. Even childish. Everything that he, in the prime of his life, was not.

There could be no more fitting end to his career.


	4. rain

It was raining.

I don't know why. The thought that water vapor rose somewhere and condensed and drifted for so long only to fall here and now was almost sad in it's own way. As if the universe had planned out this moment in advance.

She was standing before me, the picture of sad goodbyes, wrapped up in a shirt and jacket and overcoat and carrying her small amount of baggage with her. I didn't want to look at her face and be reminded of her sadness and despair but I couldn't look anywhere else. My eyes didn't linger on the more voluptuous areas - I was and still am a gentleman - but my mind could not help but drift and wander. How she looked when she laughed. How she looked naked. How she looked wearing one of my dress shirts and a smile and nothing else.

How she looked when she saw me kill.

The sheer horror of that image sent me careening back to the present and I realized she was speaking.

"There's no other way, is there." It wasn't really a question. She was looking for confirmation.

"I'm sorry."

She looked away. The rain continued to fall, light droplets pattering against the window of the terminal. I heard the PA system shout something. Her flight was about to leave.

She looked back at me. "Will I ever see you again?"

"I hope not. For your sake more than mine."

She knew why she was running away from everything she had ever known. She knew the necessity of it and so did I. That didn't stop it from being painful for either of us.

Suddenly she dropped her bags and threw her arms around me. I wrapped mine around her and felt her sob into my shoulder.

"Do you love me?" She asked.

It was not the sort of question I was prepared for. Looking back, I'm not sure I had ever really loved anyone, let alone a woman. The closest I had ever come was familial more than anything, and it was taken away from me before I even knew what it was. I didn't even know if I was capable of the feeling.

"My heart is broken," was all that I could think to say. It was getting harder to speak.

She pulled away slowly and put her hands on my cheeks, thumbs briefly running down the scar on my face. The beginnings of tears were forming in her eyes.

"If I give you my heart," she said, "will you give me what's left of yours?"

Looking back, it was such a strange, stilted line. But at the time, I was struck by her words. I found it impossible to speak now, but it didn't matter. I wouldn't have been able to answer either way. I raised one gloved hand to her cheek and wished more than anything to touch her, feel her skin on mine once more. But that was impossible.

In the absence of speech, I took her hand from my cheek and squeezed. She responded in kind. The PA system blared a final call for boarding. When it became clear that there would be no more words between us, she steeled herself, blinked back the tears that had formed in earnest, and turned away. She picked up her bags and walked to the gate.

I stood rooted to the spot until she left my sight. Then I turned around and walked away.

It had stopped raining.


	5. fishing

It took her quite a while to wake up. When she did, I was waiting for her.

Her eyes opened slowly, then quickly as she realized she was in pain. Even quicker when she realized where she was.

I waited a moment as she struggled vainly, kicking at the air and trying to raise herself up to get at her bonds. I stepped forward out of the shadows before she could make any sort of concerted effort.

She saw me and shock registered, quickly followed by anger. Her lips curled and she hissed at me.

"You are _dead_, do you hear me? _Dead!_"

I waited patiently as she listed off the various ways she'd torture and kill me once she was free. After she was done, she kicked at me, twisting and writhing on the rope she was suspended from. Once she was done with that she settled for breathing hard and staring daggers at me.

"Now that you've calmed down," I said with a sniff, "I hope you'll listen to reason."

"Give me one reason I should listen to you!" She spat.

I stepped forward and put one foot on the edge of the building.

"Can you swim?" I asked.

She quickly got the message and looked straight down at the roiling sea below. It must have been forty stories from the top of the building to the brisk Chinese sea. Her eyes widened noticeably.

"Even if you can, I'd say that's a good enough reason to listen."

She looked back up at me with a renewed contempt. She said nothing, but didn't struggle further.

"I want to make myself clear," I explained. "I hope I'm doing that, because this is a very serious matter."

She stayed quiet. I leaned forward and put my elbow on my knee. My moustache bristled despite myself.

"I don't have time to deal with pathetic rookies like you. You're sloppy, you have no respect for the craft, and you make messes where ever you go. Messes I don't want to have to clean up. I have a simple job to do in Shanghai and I intend to do it quickly, cleanly, and efficiently, and you have done nothing but exacerbate my problems since we crossed paths. You're so full of yourself you can't even see your own mistakes and I am through with trying to work around you."

She sneered at me through the night. I continued.

"Here is my proposal: leave Shanghai for the next three days. That's all I'll need to do my job."

"It's not your concern what I do," she said rather confidently for a slight-framed Chinese woman hanging by her wrists from an overhang. "A real killer would adapt to the situation."

"It becomes my concern when your fuckups ruin my reputation." I was quickly losing my patience.

She scoffed at me, and I saw something in her eyes I should have seen before.

"You don't care, do you?"

She twisted her head, flicking her long black hair away from her face. Not an easy feat in her position. I saw her wicked smile.

"I know you're not going to kill me. You wouldn't go to all this trouble just to drop me at the end of it. You're going to let me go out of some useless sense of honor or propriety. And then I'm going to hunt you down. I'm going to slit your wrinkled old throat and watch you breath your last breath and enjoy every moment of it as you realize you've been beaten."

She chuckled. "I'm the next generation, old man. Your time has past."

I stared past her black hair, beyond her black eyes and down into her black heart. She was psychotic. A lot are in this business, either when they come in or when they get out. They usually don't last as long as she had. She had a rep going back years, cold blooded and vicious. I should have realized sooner. Now I knew. I knew she was telling the truth. I knew she'd only ever cause problems for me from this moment forward. I knew my little compromise had fallen on deaf ears.

There was only one thing left to say. I flicked my wrist and a knife appear in my hand.

"I hope you can swim."

I turned and cut the rope that held her aloft and walked away without a glance in her direction as she fell, cursing my name all the way down.


	6. this is the shootout

"Would you like to see our wine list, sir?"

"No thanks."

He looked up and the moment he saw me he froze up. The smile disappeared from his lips. He knew who I was and why I was there without a word between us.

I couldn't contact him any other way but face to face since word might get back to my employers and they would not be pleased that I gave him this chance. I'd probably end up next on their little list. The only reason I'd ever reveal myself to a target in such an amateurish fashion was because I liked him. Respected him even. I wanted to let him know who was hunting him, let him prepare himself for the inevitable confrontation. An assassin of his caliber deserved at least that much.

There was a tension in the air. Waiters and waitresses strolled back and forth between tables, the bustle and chatter of a busy restaurant rolled around us. It seemed so distant that I could barely hear it anymore, barely even register that we were not alone.

We were both going for our guns before we realized what was happening.

He kicked me away with one foot and threw his table away with the other, creating cover for himself. By the time I got my gun out and put two rounds into the table, he had ducked behind it long enough for me to be uncertain my shots had hit him. Suddenly, the table flew towards me. I was able to get off one more shot before I was bowled over into another unoccupied table.

The restaurant was beginning to erupt into chaos. Both our guns were silenced, it was taking the bystanders a moment to register that we were shooting. They began to run, pushing and shoving to get to the exits, the other end of the restaurant, anywhere but where we were.

I shoved the table away and out of the corner of my eye saw him running for the cover of the waist high divider that separated the bar from the restaurant proper. I fired twice more, but he was quick and knew how to avoid fire. I only caught him once in the shoulder. He leapt over and I quickly found my own cover in a nearby booth before his gun came up and fired four times.

There was a waitress off to the side, who hadn't run from the scene of the impromptu gun battle. She was kneeling behind a embedded planter in the floor. I kept an eye on her to make sure she wasn't catching any ricochets.

Another shot from behind the divider. I decided to attempt diplomacy.

"If you'd step out, Yan, I can make this quick."

A throaty laugh from over yonder. "You still trying to avoid doing some real work?"

"Just because some of us don't get off on this wild west bollocks does _not_ mean we are lazy."

"'Course it doesn't," he replies, shouting above the hardwood wall. "Just means that some of us work harder than others."

"Are you implying that it was easy to track you down?" I said, making my way to a new piece of cover.

"Sure as shit couldn't have been hard," he said, leaning around and taking a potshot at me. It missed. Barely.

"Well how many people do I know that wear tasteless Hawaiian shirts, dreadful sunglasses, bleach their hair and drive electric green convertibles?" I eyed the divider intensely. "It's a short list for me. How about you?"

Another throaty laugh. "You'd be surprised. This business attracts some straaaaaange animals, Dee."

"Most certainly," I said, raising my pistol and taking aim.

"Will you two stop shooting up the place?!"

I couldn't see him, but I know we both turned to look at her. Standing up now, fists clenched at her sides. The picture of righteous indignation.

"It's a shootout," he explained like he was talking to a child. "There's shooting involved in a shootout."

"Only when _you're_ involved, Yan," I interjected.

"Well..." She was clearly at a loss with how to deal with this situation. I didn't blame her. How often in life are we expected to deal with shootouts? "Will you at least stop with the one-liners?!"

That got a big laugh out of him. It was almost manic. But then everything about him was like that.

"Impossible!" He declared. I made a decision. If I was ever going to have an opportunity to end this, it was now.

I burst from my cover, knocking over tables and chairs as I went, pistol out in front, firing away at the divider. Yan raised his own gun and fired. It was a staccato of whisper quiet thips as I advanced on his position. Every shot I made was answered in turn. I could hear the bullets whistle past my head, too close for comfort. But it was now or never.

I counted the shots, each and every one. I leapt over the divider, Yan was on his back and pushed himself away, sliding on the slick hardwood. He leveled his gun. I was wide open as I quickly stepped to stand over him.

He pulled the trigger and the hammer of his custom .45 clicked. I dropped down and pinned him with my knee, put my gun at his forehead.

He just smiled wanly and looked away, like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

"I'm empty."

I nodded. "You always did love that gun too much."

"You knew I'd have it with me."

Another nod. I heard the waitress wander over behind me.

"Do you want me to say something smart?" I asked honestly.

He laughed, calm for the first time I'd ever known him. "Nah. That's not your style."

I shook my head. He shrugged, which was hard under the circumstances.

"Anytime," he said, giving me his permission. Not that I needed it. He was just being polite.

I waited a few moments, took a deep breath, then pulled the trigger.

I stood up and holstered my now empty pistol. I heard the waitress gasp behind me.

"How could you do that?" She asked, with both horror and curiosity.

I stared at her, then at Yan's corpse. I squatted next to him. The ghost of his once wide and manic grin still lingered on his face. He almost looked happy aside from the hole in his forehead.

I closed his still open eyes with one hand and placed my card on his chest with the other.

I rose and turned back to her. She took a few steps back, holding her serving tray in front of her. I shrugged ever so slightly.

"He wouldn't have been my friend if he knew I'd go easy on him."

I quickly strode past her before she could respond, towards the doors leading to the kitchen. I'd have to hurry out the service entrance if I wanted to avoid the police.


End file.
